Dec 14, 2010

Do We Really Need an Interconnected Bike Network?

By Matt Chaban

December 13, 2010 | 6:37 p.m

Had I had the time, I would have added to this nonsensical opinion about connectivity, that all biking except for the rare biker who actually LIVES on a bike lane, dumps people off of her [DOT Commish Janette Sadik-Khan's] connective system. I would venture to say that next to no one would use the bike route that "connects" Eastern Parkway to Shore Parkway down two nondescript residential streets in Canarsie. However, if they connected a lane down Paerdegat Avenue along Paerdegat Basin, through Canarsie/Seaview Park and out again up East 108th Street along the other side of the basin, biker riders would use it significantly. The fact that the lanes terminate and are not connective is irrelevant. Everyone leaves the lanes to travel home somewhere.

Well, one reader certainly disagrees:

What Lew Fidler, with his windshield perspective, apparently fails to grasp is that not everyone who hops on a bike wants or needs to commute to Manhattan. We want to shop, visit friends, attend a meeting, ride to our nearby, non-Manhattan jobs or ride to the subway to commute to Manhattan. And we don't want to have to get into cars to do all that. But we want to feel that we're reasonably safe when we're on our bikes, and bike lanes and traffic-calmed streets go a long way toward accomplishing that.

So which is it? Do we need an interconnected bike system covering the entire city for it to be truly effective? Would not having one be like building a bridge to nowhere? Or is our time and money better spent on a system that will get a lot of use from a high concentration of riders while leaving gaps in the broader system? Should every street in the city have a lane? Should we ban cars all together? What's your solution?

Dec 9, 2010

The dye map of the creek, left; and the four men hit with environmental crime charges

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Several stores at Brooklyn shopping center have been dumping raw sewage and restaurant grease into a small creek that empties into Jamaica Bay, a wildlife jewel next to John F. Kennedy International Airport, authorities said Wednesday.

The businesses, which include a Regal Entertainment multiplex theater, a bagel shop, a TGI Friday's restaurant and a marina, were accused of using busted sewer pipes that leaked human waste into the water and were charged with environmental violations. Residents complained starting last year, but prosecutors say some of the businesses were first cited in 2003.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said it's unclear whether the sewage would cause permanent environmental damage. The leaks did not affect the city's water supply, the largest unfiltered supply system in the world.

The waste was seeping from septic pipes that run along the banks of the Shell Bank Creek, which weaves through Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park neighborhoods in the southeastern tip of Brooklyn, prosecutors charged. The Department of Environmental Protection served a notice to the manager of the Regal Entertainment Group that the lines needed repairing after 2003.

But after complaints in 2009, an investigation using green dye traced discharges of fecal matter and toilet paper to the creek from the movie theater, prosecutors said. The other businesses charged, which include Knapp Street Bagels and the Deauville Marina, also used the pipes.

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